Big drug com­pany acts over US lethal in­jec­tions

New York: Pfizer, the world’s largest phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany, has im­posed a new set of con­trols on its prod­ucts to en­sure they are not used by US pris­ons to ex­e­cute death row in­mates, ac­cord­ing to a New York Times re­port. The move shuts off the last re­main­ing le­gal source of the drugs used in lethal in­jec­tions, throw­ing death penalty states into deeper dis­ar­ray as they strug­gle to ob­tain drugs and carry out ex­e­cu­tions.

States have be­come in­creas­ingly se­cre­tive about the source of their lethal in­jec­tion drugs as a way to sub­vert a Euro­pean-led boy­cott that blocked trade of the sup­plies to US prison de­part­ments. “Pfizer makes its prod­ucts to en­hance and save the lives of the pa­tients we serve,” the com­pany said in a strongly worded state­ment on Fri­day. The com­pany added that it “strongly ob­jects to the use of its prod­ucts as lethal in­jec­tions for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment”. In a state­ment on Fri­day, Maya Foa, a di­rec­tor at in­ter­na­tional hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tion Re­prieve, wel­comed Pfizer’s ac­tions, which she said ce­ments “the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try’s op­po­si­tion to the mis­use of medicines.” The Guardian